Artifact Report

Chapter 86 Jin Xueli: Ways to Get Out
Her cell phone had been taken away long ago, and from the holding cell, she couldn't see the clock on the hall wall. It felt like twenty or thirty minutes later, Jin Xueli realized something was wrong.

The light bulb in the cell suddenly went out; the dim light in the hall seemed to have died on the way down the stairs before it could even climb down.

She groped for the iron railing, and everything in front of her was dim and dark.

...It's not a power outage.

The noisy voices that had been rising and falling in the Central Police Station suddenly disappeared the moment the lights went out. There was not a single cry for help, as if everyone had melted into the darkness.

The temperature dropped sharply, but it was not like the coldness of winter or air conditioning; the air was thick and sticky, as if there was a layer of saliva on the skin, and in the wind, one could not help but feel the shivering fishy chill.

Jin Xueli was all too familiar with this feeling of gloom, but she had never imagined that one day she would have the illusion that she was in a nest in Blackmore City.

Was it Chai Si who did it?

Was some kind of fake image used? Didn't the police take away the things on his body? Or was it something that could be integrated into the body?

The thought, "As expected of the second-in-command, his fake image is so advanced," flashed through Jin Xueli's mind.

After all, he was in this line of work, so even at this point, he instinctively calculated the value of the fake in his mind.

The current situation was beyond her expectations - after all, she had never thought that someone would dare to declare war on the police system - she knew she should seize the opportunity and make good use of it, but she couldn't think of what to do for a moment.

Since the light disappeared, she hadn't heard any sound, as if she were the only living person in the police station. After hesitating for a while, Jin Xueli tentatively called out, "Hello... Is there anyone outside?"

"Huh?" A voice immediately responded. "Is there someone still imprisoned here?"

It seemed to come from the stairs; it sounded calm and unhurried, so it couldn't be an ordinary person who was suddenly attacked by a false image.

"Who are you?" Jin Xueli asked.

"Before asking someone about their identity, you should introduce yourself first," said the man, whose voice was a little hard to tell whether it was a man or a woman. Listening again, it seemed to be a high-pitched voice. "Aren't you afraid?"

"I was captured," Jin Xueli replied, not revealing any further information. "How did you get in?"

"You're sitting in a cell, and everyone knows you were arrested," the voice said. "I'm a mercenary. Our boss said that the Blackmoor police arrested someone they shouldn't have."

mercenary?
"Are you a hunter?" Jin Xueli recalled what she had heard before and immediately asked, "So there really are hunters working as mercenaries? I'm a hunter too—please, please let me out."

"Well, I have to ask the boss what he thinks."

"Okay," Jin Xueli said, as if she had grabbed a life-saving straw, and added hastily, "You must have been sent by Chase Monroe, right? He knows me! You must tell your boss that I'm a friend of Chase's—and that I was arrested with him."

"understood."

I don’t know if it was due to an artifact, but there was no sound of receding footsteps from the top of the stairs - so come to think of it, Jin Xueli didn’t hear him approaching before he suddenly interrupted her.

It seems that this artifact not only snuffs out light, but also muffles sound; the only exception seems to be conversations between people at close range.

Time passes especially slowly under the anxiety of sitting on pins and needles.

When Jin Xueli even began to doubt whether this illusion also had the function of affecting time, she finally made out a pair of feet walking down the stairs in the dim light; as the person gradually approached, she found that she had guessed wrong, and the other person's figure looked like a woman.

"Don't be too happy," the woman said, "our boss is willing to let you out, but I don't know where the key is."

After going down the stairs, the cave-like cell became even darker. Even though the two were facing each other, separated by only a layer of bars, they could not see each other's faces clearly - for some reason, Jin Xueli always felt that the other person was a little familiar.

But this familiarity was also fleeting and unreal, like a wisp of white cotton floating in the water, which would disappear without a trace if you changed your perspective. "So what should we do?" Jin Xueli asked. No matter what, the most urgent thing was to get out of the cell. "Oh, right, the detective who just locked me up might have the key..."

"Where can I find them? I don't know them," the woman behind the iron bars replied. "Besides, I don't even know if their bodies are still intact or if they've been preserved."

"Is... is it because of the fake image you used?" Even when Jin Xueli was anxious to leave, she was stunned when she heard this.

"What else could it be?" the woman said, seemingly unable to suppress her pride. "Now the entire Central Police Station has been separated from Blackmore City. Even if people from Blackmore City walked up to the police station, they wouldn't be able to see this building."

"Has it turned into a nest?" This was Jin Xueli's first guess.

"It's not that easy to turn the human world into a nest. I wish it could be."

The woman sighed regretfully and said, "In short, I can't open this iron railing, and I can't find the key. I can only use some unconventional means to get you out. This way, I can report to the boss. After all, you are Mr. Monroe's friend."

...I was implicated by him, but in the end I had to get out thanks to him.

"What unconventional means? Using false images?" Jin Xueli asked.

"Yes," the woman said, her jaw moving in the dim light. "Look down and take this."

Jin Xueli took a half step back and lowered her head. She saw the woman slowly raise her arm and extend a hand between the iron bars, holding something. She fumbled for it and found it was a cell phone—she didn't know whose it was, and the screen was black.

"This is an illusion," the woman said. "I'll call you right now. If you pick up the phone, you can use it to get to my side. That way, you'll be out of the cell naturally. You won't need a key at all."

Although she has seen and heard of many artifacts, Jin Xueli is still surprised by their wonders from time to time.

"Do you need to unlock it?" she asked. "Face recognition, fingerprint recognition, or something..."

At this point, Jin Xueli couldn't tell why, but something suddenly jolted her heart—as if a message locked in her subconscious had suddenly knocked on the door.

"Don't worry, just pick it up."

"Okay," she came to her senses, seeing that she would be free soon, she smiled at the woman with gratitude and said, "You fight, I'm ready."

The blurry shadow of the woman raised her other hand, and it was unclear whether she was holding another mobile phone.

She just pressed the thing that should be a phone to her ear, and the screen of the phone in Jin Xueli's hand immediately lit up, dyeing her eyes blue; the caller ID showed that the number was an unfamiliar one, and it didn't look like a normal phone number - this was also expected, after all, it was an illusion.

Just as she was about to press the answer button, Jin Xueli paused.

In the upper right corner of the screen, where the telecom operator's logo should be, the word "Nest" is now written.

A nest of nests?
The familiar feeling that lingered, the bump in my heart just now...

Jin Xueli raised her cell phone as if possessed by a ghost and pointed the screen light at the woman's face outside the iron railings.

She saw the face of the policewoman who had asked her to take fingerprints earlier.

However, there were no eyeballs on the other person's face.

　This chapter is very short because I couldn't sleep well and couldn't adjust my state, so I could only divide one chapter into two chapters... I tried my best to make it interesting.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)